O. Henry Quotes
-
There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.
→ -
If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life
→ -
This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.
→ -
By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal.
→ -
The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.
→ -
There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.
→ -
It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.
→ -
By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
→ -
It gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as a glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it.
→ -
My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.
→ -
The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.
→ -
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.
→ -
I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.
→ -
I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.
→ -
Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.
→ -
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
→ -
Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
→ -
I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
→ -
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what they sing.
→ -
What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?
→ -
The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.
→ -
It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
→ -
If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.
→ -
Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.
→ -
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
→ -
Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks.
→ -
It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.
→ -
In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in its greatness.
→ -
History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
→ -
East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.
→
Related Authors
-
Robert Frost Poet -
Mark Twain Author -
Ambrose Bierce Journalist -
Arthur Conan Doyle Physician -
Hector Hugh Munro Writer -
Guy de Maupassant Writer -
Edgar Allan Poe Author -
Robert Louis Stevenson Novelist -
Charles Dickens Writer -
Ruskin Bond Author -
Anton Chekhov Physician -
Stephen Leacock Writer -
Ernest Hemingway Author -
Washington Irving Author -
Jerome K. Jerome Writer -
Oscar Wilde Writer -
Jack London Author -
Rudyard Kipling Writer -
Leo Tolstoy Writer -
Ray Bradbury Writer